electra rehearsal logs and audtion

Electra audition was the first of four that we went through for this unit. Building up to the audition i was slightly nervous because as I wasn't sure how it was going to pan out. We were then told that it was going to be a workshop audition which had less pressure in contrast to other auditions an actor may come across with. Having less pressure came at a cost of showing group setting qualities like working in a team and complimenting each other during the audition process.

 During this audition we were introduced to masks which already had emotional expressions on them. Having the masks forced me to use more body expressions because the mask covered my face. I also felt like I had to match my body posture to the emotion my mask had. 

In Greek theatre they would have used masks to help the audience seating far see how the characters were feeling. All their body language movements would have exaggerated for the same purpose. I think that this is what influenced the over the top Shakespearean acting that those who don't relate to theatre think theatre is.  

I think that this audition worked well because there was no pressure which enabled people to express themselves. We also performed improvised pieces that I later on realized were plots from the play. The director wanted to se how we would react to the scenarios to help determine who we could play. In another audition we could have walked in alone and given the scenario and the word go which is much tougher because you have nothing to react to in contrast to having another person you can feed off.

For the purposes of the play I think that this type of audition worked. Some modern films require the actor to act by themselves and react to a fictional character that wont be physically be there on set but is later on added on the computers.

04/11/14

This was the first lesson which we had without the script however this didn’t go well because I didn’t know all my lines by heart and even when I was getting prompted I still struggled. The objective for next lesson is to be off script and I think to achieve this will need to go through my lines plenty of times and maybe ask a friend to help me go through the line because doing them by myself hasn’t got me very far. Remembering the blocking of what we had so far was a positive because it allowed the rehearsals to run smoother because we didn’t have to keep stopping to remember what we had already blocked.